


summer

by shippingthebullshit



Category: One Direction
Genre: F/M, M/M, Other, Sexuality Crisis, Underage Kissing, a bit of language, slight mention of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 00:49:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shippingthebullshit/pseuds/shippingthebullshit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The summer Harry is five he meets Louis-- who is seven and very  pretty with his caramel coloured hair and ocean blue eyes, and Harry believes that he is very much in love with him.</p><p>A sort-of five times fic in which Harry is most definitely a flower child, Louis has a sexuality crisis and I exhibit expert grammatical failure. Also, there's Niall and Gemma, so plus for that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	summer

**Author's Note:**

> Holy fuck I actually finished something.

The summer Harry is five he meets Louis-- who is seven and very pretty with his caramel coloured hair and ocean blue eyes, and Harry believes that he is very much in love with him. Louis has two younger sisters who are very loud, and very annoying, and Harry doesn’t quite care for them very much, but he puts up the youngest, Fizzy (who is the most annoying) —honestly what sort of a name is Fizzy anyway? It sounds like a sodapop—so that he and Louis can spend more time together.  
They build forts, and tree domes; slay dragons and fly to the moon and back—twice—that summer. Louis calls it their summer of adventure. Harry thinks that maybe it’s something different. But there’s definitely adventure.  
They have a sleep over the last official day of summer.  
While they lay tangled together— It started that summer. Harry thinks if he had to pinpoint an exact time they’re clingyness started, it was that summer— Harry turns to look up from where his head is resting on Louis’s chest and whispers out a, “Hey, Lou?”  
“Yeah, Haz?” Louis replies, pausing his strokes to Harry’s curls.  
“I’m really glad you moved here.”  
“I am too, Hazza.”  
It becomes a sort of tradition from then on, at the end of the summer, always staying at one or the other’s house, guarding each other on their first days.  
Harry thinks that summer was the summer he started falling in love with Louis.

 

………..

The summer that Harry is eight and Louis is ten, Louis goes to summer camp for the last three weeks of their summer and misses his first sleepover ever. Harry seethes and sulks and doesn’t come out of his room for a week. (Not until Louis makes Anne open Harry’s door with her key and barges in and jumps on Harry and hugs him until and promises to never go away ever, does he forgive Louis, because he realized that Louis missed Harry just as much as Harry missed Louis, and okay... Harry missed Louis loads.)  
They have their regular sleepover the day before school starts back—this becomes their new tradition, and to be honest, Harry quite likes it, seeing as he’s always a bit nervous the morning and night before his first day.  
He’s tired, but he has to ask Louis, can’t physically resist it: “Hey, Lou?”  
“Yeah, Hazza?”  
“Did you miss me?” It’s a rhetorical question, he knows very well that Louis missed him-- knows that Louis hated the camp-- but he had to ask, had to be reassured.  
Louis gapes. “Of course I missed you, you sod!” He tackles Harry then, tickling the younger boy and only stopping when Harry is begging for mercy.  
Breathless and still giggling, Louis spreads his body across Harry’s, wrapping his arms around the boy’s neck.  
“I’m glad you’re back, Lou,” Harry murmured through a yawn, smiling blearily up at Louis.  
“I’ll never leave you curly,” Louis replies with a wide grin and a peck to Harry’s cheek.

……….  
It’s a lie though, because the summer that Harry is 13 and Louis is 15, Louis gets a girlfriend; her name is Hannah, and she’s a nice enough girl—Harry likes her, mostly—pretty, too. But she’s just too… Well, she’s a girl. Sure, he’s thought about girls (mostly because the older ones are shoving themselves at him in an attempt to win over Louis’s affections). That, and he’s been told his curls are quite nice.  
Not that he’s complaining, but, well. He’s complaining. All he really wants to do is spend the summer with Louis on the beach, playing footie, watching crap telly on rainy days. But Louis’s with Hannah now, and Harry guesses that Louis doesn’t want him anymore, because Louis doesn’t call once that summer, and they don’t have their sleep over.  
Harry walks into his school alone because Louis has started college and Harry is still in secondary, and fuck all if it isn’t the worst day of his life.  
Sure he’s bigger than most of them, and he boxes, so he can hold his own weight, but he comes home with a black eye and a bloody nose because some dick thought it’d be a good idea to call him a princess. He doesn’t cry as he doesn’t shuffle his feet along the sidewalk on the way home, and he definitely doesn’t drag his bag either because that would be childish. His eye is hurting and all he really wants is to go home and get his mum to make him tea and biscuits, but another boy calls out to him and Harry’s about to snark off to him when he realizes it’s Louis and Hannah running to catch up.  
Louis’s got a wide grin on his face and they’re holding hands, but Hannah gasps when she sees his eye; she snatches out of Louis’s grip rushes up to him; touching his face gently, eyeing the bruise. She lets him go and jerks Louis to her, glaring at him slightly before she turns back to Harry.  
“Who did this to you, Haz?” And honestly, yeah, it irks him a bit that she calls him Haz, but it’s not, so bad.  
He only shrugs and grabs at the tops of his arms self-consciously, rubbing them a bit. “A few of the older boys.”  
Louis’s face hardens and he steps forward, examining the eye for himself. “Is this all they did, Hazza?” He grits out.  
Harry gulps, silently debating whether or not to tell Louis. He bits his lip and lets his gaze wander between Louis and Hannah before sighing and shaking his head. “They called me a… a princess,” he mutters, looking down, ashamed. “It’s nothing, Lou, really—“ But he only hears a growl and looks up to see an extremely angry Louis.  
“Who? Who, Harry? Who did this to you I want to know now,” Louis grits out, his touch to Harry’s face much softer than the tone in his voice.  
“Marcus, and… And Stan,” he whispers, ashamed. Stan, who’d been their friend since the beginning, since that first summer.  
“That cunt,” Louis spits out, stomping off in the direction of the older boy’s house.  
“Louis, wait!” Harry calls, but his voice fades when Louis shows no sign of turning back.  
Hannah tugs at his arm and on towards his house, stroking his back softly. “He’s only protecting you, Haz. It’s because you’re his little Hazzie-poo,” she teases, giggling softly and pinching his cheeks.  
Harry smiles softly and leans into her touch, sighing. “Call me Hazzie-poo ever again and I’ll kill you Hannah Walker,” he replies, glaring slightly.  
She only laughs and pulls him in by his shoulder, steering him toward Louis’s house. “C’mon,” she giggles, “I’m in the mood for biscuits and tea.”  
(He and Louis have their first sleep over in ages that summer. They lay together under the stars and drink the stolen beers from Mark’s stash.  
Harry turns to Louis and props up on his elbow. “Hey, Lou?”  
“Yeah, Haz?”  
“What does being in love feel like?” He asks it while he nibbles at his lip.  
“Well, it… It’s like that fuzzy feeling you get, when you see a pretty girl… in the hall? Or when she hugs you and you get butterflies. But… It’s like that all the time. Especially when you kiss the girl you love,” Louis replies happily. “Why, is my little Haz in loooooveeeee?” Louis teases, poking at Harry’s sides.  
Harry smiles as he nods shyly, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He can’t tell Louis who he’s in love with… because he’s in love with Louis.  
………

The Christmas that Harry is 16 and Louis turns 19, Louis cheats on Hannah with a curly-haired boy from a club and they break Jay’s favorite vase during their fight. (She calls him a dirty faggot and Harry wants to scream that that’s not even a word, but he bites his tongue because he doesn’t think Louis would take to kindly to him eavesdropping in the bushes.) Louis crawls into Harry’s bed that night and cries into his shirt as he sobs about a sexuality crisis.  
Harry only strokes his hair and shushes him, trying to remember how his mom handled this during the summer.  
“Lou. Lou-Lou,” he mumbles, pressing gentle kisses to Louis’s hair. The older boy’s been staying at Harry’s for the past three days, avoiding the girls and his mum (for obvious reasons that aren’t so obvious to Harry). “Louis, please look at me.” Harry kneels beside his bed with a cup of Yorkshire and a plate bearing a cheese toastie. “You’ve got to eat something,” Harry whispers against Louis’s forehead. “Please.”  
Grumbling, Louis tugs the blanket over his head and turns away from Harry. “Go ‘way,” he mutters, the sound muffled by the thick fabric.  
“Sorry, boo, I can’t. You’ve got to come out eventually.”  
“Harry.”  
“Sorry, bad choice of words,” he replies, cringing. When Louis doesn’t budge, Harry sighs and places the plate and mug on his bedside table. “Mum wants to talk to you, and she says that if you don’t come to her she’s coming in here. Please don’t make her come in here,” Harry begs quietly, kissing Louis’s hair gently before he stalks back down the stairs.  
“He’s so sad, mum. He looks like a kicked puppy,” Harry whispers, head laid in Anne’s lap as she cards her fingers through his curls. “I wish that—Christ, I wish I could do something for him.”  
“You’re doing all you can, love. Louis just needs his space right now. He isn’t taking it as well as you did. Though I suspect that you came to terms a long time ago. Louis is having to navigate this blindly, sweetheart. I think that you can help him by doing exactly what you’ve been doing for him.”  
Harry nods into her thigh and closes his eyes.

……

The next week, Louis leaves for Uni and Harry kisses a boy under the bridge; Louis doesn’t talk to him for three days.  
“I don’t understand why you’re so angry Louis! It’s not like I kissed you!” Harry shouts, furious at his best friend.  
“You’re such an idiot Harry! He’s just using you!”  
“Really, Louis? Really? Like how the guy at that club was using you?” And, yeah, Harry knows that’s a low blow, but honestly.  
“Don’t bring that up, Harry that’s a dick move,” Louis growls, swinging around to face the younger boy.  
“What do you want me to do Louis?” Harry finally relents, throwing his hands up in an exasperated movement. “Stay single my entire life? Never find happiness? I can’t help that I like someone, Louis. You know, like you couldn’t control dating Hannah for three years?” He spits it out like it’s poison on his tongue.  
“You could have at least found someone better than that little Irish slag!” Louis retorts.  
“You fucking cunt!” Harry growls, and that’s it. He lunges for Louis and grabs him by the collar, poising a fist over the boy's jaw. “Say one more thing about him I fucking dare you.” He’s still holding tight to Louis, fist still poised above his face.  
He doesn’t see Louis leaning in to him, not at first, but he feels it when their lips collide. It’s like a shock of cold water running down his body and Harry has to take a second to let the fact that 'Louis is kissing me holy shit' sink in.  
When he breaks out of his reverie, he grabs Louis’s face between his palms and kisses him back.  
Louis pulls away suddenly, gasping like he didn’t know what he’s done, and Harry looks down at him.  
“I- I.. Fuck, Harry, I’m so-“ Harry cuts him off with another peck before he pulls away again and rests his forehead on Louis’s.  
“Shut up you oblivious sod. Do you know how long I’ve wanted you to do that?”  
Louis giggles and kisses Harry again. “Not as long as I have.”  
“Really, Lou?” He asks, slightly giddy.  
“Okay, probably not, but I’ve wanted to for a long time.”  
Harry smiles at him. “Since that first summer, I knew I was in love with you,” he whispers into Louis’s hair. (Even if Harry’s only 17, he’s taller than Louis is by at least an inch—Louis hates to admit it.)  
“Harry you were like, 5.”  
“So? I knew I liked you and that I wanted to kiss you. And then Hannah happened and I just sort of… Knew,” he replies.  
“Hannah. You’ve known since Hannah. Christ, Haz that’s… That’s almost six years!” Louis exclaims.  
“Yeah, well. Not all of us have the pleasure of having their identity crisis whilst still with their girlfriend.”  
Louis swats at his chest playfully. “Shush you. You’re much more charming with your mouth shut.”  
“Oh how you wound me!”  
Louis chuckles at that and pecks Harry again. “I have to leave you now. Couldn’t you have waited for the summer?”  
Harry smiled. “Everything good always happens in the summer, doesn’t it?” He whispered happily.

 

…….

The summer that Harry is 21 and Louis is 23, he and Louis take a trip to Paris. They rent a hotel room and don’t come out for three days. Louis asks him to marry him under the Eiffel Tower and Harry blushes from the corniness but kisses him any way and says yes almost immediately.  
Their mums gush at them and Gemma pinches Harry’s cheeks and tells him that Niall makes a better boyfriend for her and that if he isn’t invited to the wedding she won’t be coming at all.  
Louis little sisters giggle and screech at the prospect of a new brother and Harry preens under the attention.  
Harry kisses him in the doorway of their new house, holding him closer than normal, and claps his hands together so he can feel the ring around his finger.  
“Hey, Lou?”  
“Yeah, Haz?”  
“I love you.”  
“I love you, too.”


End file.
